Interview for residency - 1

Aim:

Analysis of various aspects of residency interview influencing decision to rank applicants

Methods:

Data was obtained from NRMP program directors survey results 2010. The values are Mean importance rating in ranking applicants. Range was from 1 to 5, where 5 was very important. Multiple subjects including Internal medicine (IM), family medicine (FM), neurology, pathology, psychiatry etc were compared with a color coded heat map with respect to four characteristics of an interview. These are

1. Interaction with faculty during interview

2. Interpersonal skills

3. Interaction with residents during interview

4. Perceived interest in program

Fig 1. relative importance of various aspects of conduct during residency interview

Results:

Interaction with faculty and interpersonal skills during an interview were consistently given very high weight when it came to ranking applicants. Interactions with residents was of variable but positive importance and depended on the speciality. FM and Med/Peds programs placed interactions with their residents during interview higher than other programs. Surprisingly, IM programs (4.3) on average did not consider interactions with residents highly in comparison to other programs.

Perceived interest in program (how eager you seem to be to join a program) was lower on scale of importance except for dermatology (4.4) and Pathology (4.2). The perceived interest was least important in EM, IM and Peds. This is not to say that this factor is unimportant when interviewing for these programs, but it may be less so than compared to others.

Conclusions

1. All programs placed importance on faculty interaction along with interpersonal skills.

2. Dermatology placed most importance on interaction with faculty while Psychiatry placed the most importance to interpersonal skills in an interview than any other speciality.

3. Family medicine placed most importance on interactions with residents along with Med/Peds. This means if you are on FM or M/P interview pay more attention to talking to residents, chief residents and connect with them. 4. How eager you seem to want to join a program mattered the most in dermatology and pathology.

5. Pediatrics interviews did not place much importance on how eager you were in joining he program along with IM and EM.

Read about how to succeed at a residency interview and commonly asked interview questions along with answers to some tough interview questions.


Part 2 can be read here.